The skylords have decided not to drop any snow this year, but to come right down and gently lay a sheet of ice across the ground. The fog just kind of rolled in and splayed out over the earth until it hardened and stuck there. Lazy and uninspired.

I suppose it’s pretty. The leaves and the grass are all white and stiff, and it would look nice enough in a picture. Concrete and asphalt, though, have become harrowing adventures. We’ve skipped the whimsy and excitement of the first snow of the year and gone straight to oh-heck-shit-shit, and it feels like a bit of a ripoff.

Landlords and shop owners haven’t bothered to salt the sidewalks, and the city hasn’t mobilized to defrost the roads at all. I watched a woman step slowly, trepidatiously down the hill toward the train station, poking her toe at a particularly difficult section before deciding to give up and turn back the way she came. I crossed the bit she gave up on, of course, because I think men are allowed to fall over and break their skulls open.

I guess when the sky itself half-asses its job, the rest of us just do the same. There would be no point banging a shovel against the ice, and if you’re not shovelling anything how do you know where to spread the salt? People will figure out new ways to walk, and the ones who don’t will die. A more surefooted generation comes.

“Trepidatiously” should be fast-tracked into the dictionary. But I’m not very good at starting things and probably shouldn’t have deleted my website.